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# Publisher’s Platform: Anyone there? The government shutdown – Month 2
- URL: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2019/01/publishers-platform-anyone-there-the-government-shutdown-month-2/
- Published: 2019-01-25T05:06:52.000Z
- Updated: 2019-01-25T05:38:34.000Z
- Author: Bill Marler
- Tags: Uncategorized, Bill Marler, government shutdown, opinion, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-25 10:47

Day 34

I take a ferry to work guarded at times by now unpaid members of the Coast Guard. Next week with increasing trepidation, I will go through TSA Security with more unpaid professionals on the job monitoring security to then board a plane to be routed to NYC by unpaid Air Traffic Controllers. I am not sure I could focus on my job while wondering how bills were to be paid.

The shutdown hit close to home this morning when I opened my laptop at 5:30 a.m. to see a flood of hundreds of “Out of Office” notifications responding to emails generated from last night’s blog posts on Salmonella in flour and spinach.

Here are just a few:

> *“Thank you for your message. I am not in the office at this time. I am on furlough without access to email, due to the lapse in federal government funding. I will return your message as soon as possible once funding has been restored. For information about available government services, visit USA.gov.”*  
>  
> *“Due to the absence of either an FY 2019 appropriation or Continuing Resolution for FDA, I am out of the office on furlough status and I am not able to read or respond to your message.”*  
>  
> *“I am currently out of the office.”*

Odd way to run a government.

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